Famous Works Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Works poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous works poems. These examples illustrate what a famous works poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Shakespeare, William
...se similes to your own command,
Hallow'd with sighs that burning lungs did raise;
What me your minister, for you obeys,
Works under you; and to your audit comes
Their distract parcels in combined sums.
''Lo, this device was sent me from a nun,
Or sister sanctified, of holiest note;
Which late her noble suit in court did shun,
Whose rarest havings made the blossoms dote;
For she was sought by spirits of richest coat,
But kept cold distance, and did thence remove,
To spend...Read more of this...
by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...ation shine
Full on the earth, and grateful were its beams:
Its beams were grateful to the chosen seed,
To all whose works were worthy of the day.
But creatures lucifuge, whose ways were dark,
Ere this in shades of paganism hid,
Did vent their poison, and malignant breath,
To stain the splendour of the light divine,
Which pierc'd their cells and brought their deeds to view
Num'rous combin'd of ev'ry tongue and tribe,
Made battle proud, and impious war brought on...Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...Beauty, must to all impart,
At once the Source, and End, and Test of Art
Art from that Fund each just Supply provides,
Works without Show, and without Pomp presides:
In some fair Body thus th' informing Soul
With Spirits feeds, with Vigour fills the whole,
Each Motion guides, and ev'ry Nerve sustains;
It self unseen, but in th' Effects, remains.
Some, to whom Heav'n in Wit has been profuse.
Want as much more, to turn it to its use,
For Wit and Judgment often are at s...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...u rapport with the universe.
Produce great persons, the rest follows.
4
America isolated I sing;
I say that works made here in the spirit of other lands, are so much poison in The States.
(How dare such insects as we see assume to write poems for America?
For our victorious armies, and the offspring following the armies?)
Piety and conformity to them that like!
Peace, obesity, allegiance, to them that like!
I am he who tauntingly compels men, women, nati...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...ed; for I this night
(Such night till this I never passed) have dreamed,
If dreamed, not, as I oft am wont, of thee,
Works of day past, or morrow's next design,
But of offence and trouble, which my mind
Knew never till this irksome night: Methought,
Close at mine ear one called me forth to walk
With gentle voice; I thought it thine: It said,
'Why sleepest thou, Eve? now is the pleasant time,
'The cool, the silent, save where silence yields
'To the night-warbling bir...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...s; nor of me shalt pass
Unpraised: for nothing lovelier can be found
In woman, than to study houshold good,
And good works in her husband to promote.
Yet not so strictly hath our Lord imposed
Labour, as to debar us when we need
Refreshment, whether food, or talk between,
Food of the mind, or this sweet intercourse
Of looks and smiles; for smiles from reason flow,
To brute denied, and are of love the food;
Love, not the lowest end of human life.
For not to i...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...1
SINGING my days,
Singing the great achievements of the present,
Singing the strong, light works of engineers,
Our modern wonders, (the antique ponderous Seven outvied,)
In the Old World, the east, the Suez canal,
The New by its mighty railroad spann’d,
The seas inlaid with eloquent, gentle wires,
I sound, to commence, the cry, with thee, O soul,
The Past! the Past! the Past!
The Past! the dark, unfathom’d retrospect!
The teeming gulf! the ...Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...strict
Otherness of the painter in his
Other room. We have surprised him
At work, but no, he has surprised us
As he works. The picture is almost finished,
The surprise almost over, as when one looks out,
Startled by a snowfall which even now is
Ending in specks and sparkles of snow.
It happened while you were inside, asleep,
And there is no reason why you should have
Been awake for it, except that the day
Is ending and it will be hard for you
To get to sleep tonig...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother’s
bed-room;)
The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,
He turns his quid of tobacco, while his eyes blurr with the manuscript;
The malform’d limbs are tied to the surgeon’s table,
What is removed drops horribly in a pail;
The quadroon girl is sold at the auction-stand—the drunkard nods by the
bar-room stove;
The machinist rolls up his sleeves—the policeman travels his beat—the
gat...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...scoured of the weed,
And lichen and thorn could crawl and feed,
Since the foes of settled house and creed
Had swept old works away.
King Alfred gazed all sorrowful
At thistle and mosses grey,
Then laughed; and watched the finches flash,
Till a rally of Danes with shield and bill
Rolled drunk over the dome of the hill,
And, hearing of his harp and skill,
They dragged him to their play.
And as they went through the high green grass
They roared like the great green sea...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
... For when the chiming bounds are out, He dearly loves their voices! Old Ruth works out of doors with him. And does what Simon cannot do; For she, not over stout of limb, Is stouter of the two. And though you with your utmost skill From labour could not wean them, Alas! 'tis very little, all Which they can do between them. ...Read more of this...
by
Masefield, John
...e;
I quite agree it's out of date,
One does too much, another shirks,
Unjust, I grant; but still. . . it works.
To get the whole world out of bed
And washed, and dressed, and warmed, and fed,
To work, and back to bed again,
Believe me, Saul, costs worlds of pain.
Then, as to whether true or sham
That book of Christ, Whose priest I am;
The Bible is a lie, say you,
where do you stand, suppose it true?
Goodbye. But if you've more to say
My do...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...the pleasant'st life of all
5.92 Hath yet amongst that sweet, some bitter gall.
5.93 Though reading others' Works doth much refresh,
5.94 Yet studying much brings weariness to th' flesh.
5.95 My studies, labours, readings all are done,
5.96 And my last period can e'en elmost run.
5.97 Corruption, my Father, I do call,
5.98 Mother, and sisters both; the worms that crawl
5.99 In my dark house, such kindred I have store.
5.100 ...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...things of old,
And do I dead upon the living gaze?
Or rather doth the mind, that can behold
The wondrous beauty of the works and days,
Create the image that her thoughts enfold?
19
Rejoice, ye dead, where'er your spirits dwell,
Rejoice that yet on earth your fame is bright;
And that your names, remember'd day and night,
Live on the lips of those that love you well.
'Tis ye that conquer'd have the powers of hell,
Each with the special grace of your delight:
Ye are the w...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...und of the"o" in "worry." Such is Human Perversity. This also seems a fitting occasion to notice the other hard works in that poem. Humpty-Dumpty's theory, of two meanings packed into one word like a port{-} manteau, seems to me the right explanation for all.
For instance, take the two words "fuming" and "furious." Make up your mind that you will say both words, but leave it unsettled which you will say first. Now open your mouth and speak. If yo...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...s with some wonder, & must confess my own
conviction. After dinner I ask'd Isaiah to favour the world with
his lost works, he said none of equal value was lost. Ezekiel
said the same of his.
I also asked Isaiah what made him go naked and barefoot three
years? he answerd, the same that made our friend Diogenes the
Grecian.
I then asked Ezekiel. why he eat dung, & lay so long on his
right & left side? he answerd. the desire of raising other men
into a pe...Read more of this...
by
Thomson, James
...Realms of Love,
And Peace, that thinks no Ill: But These, the Muse,
Whose Charity, unlimited, extends
As wide as Nature works, disdains to sing,
Returning to her nobler Theme in view --
FOR, see! where Winter comes, himself, confest,
Striding the gloomy Blast. First Rains obscure
Drive thro' the mingling Skies, with Tempest foul;
Beat on the Mountain's Brow, and shake the Woods,
That, sounding, wave below. The dreary Plain
Lies overwhelm'd, and lost. The bellyi...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...he outside of heaven; and Chaucer's 'Wife of Bath,' Pulci's 'Morgante Maggiore,' Swift's 'Tale of a Tub,' and the other
works above referred to, are cases in point of the freedom with which saints, &c. may be permitted to converse in works not intended to be serious.
Q.R.
*** Mr. Southey being, as he says, a good Christian and vindictive, threatens, I understand, a reply to this our answer. It is to be hoped that his visionary faculties will be in ...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...The Golden Bough; I have used especially the
two volumes Adonis, Attis, Osiris. Anyone who is acquainted with
these works will immediately recognise in the poem certain references to
vegetation ceremonies.
Macmillan Cambridge.
I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD
Line 20. Cf. Ezekiel 2:1.
23. Cf. Ecclesiastes 12:5.
31. V. Tristan und Isolde, i, verses 5-8.
42. Id. iii, verse 24.
46. I am not familiar with the exact...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...phials, 'tis said
The living were not envied of the dead.
Her cave was stored with scrolls of strange device,
The works of some Saturnian Archimage,
Which taught the expiations at whose price
Men from the Gods might win that happy age
Too lightly lost, redeeming native vice,--
And which might quench the earth-consuming rage
Of gold and blood, till men should live and move
Harmonious as the sacred stars above:--
And how all things that seem untameable,
Not to be checked...Read more of this...
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